Does the Surface not have a desktop version of Windows Media Player? Personally I prefer Zune, but obviously that's not going to work on RT. However, I was under the impression that all of the stock components of Windows 8 were compiled for ARM and included in RT.

The lack of a decent settings menu and inability to separate your collection from the store is the root of many of these annoyances. Zune handled it almost perfectly. Keep your store out of our faces unless we specifically request it.

not sure if this is what you meant but you can have it load straight to your music, check under settings.

I've since realized, the whole problem is the Music App is crap for playlist creation and management, as well as synced playlists, etc. It does great if you buy your music from the Xbox music store which tells you where MS' focus is.

Actually if your music is on a local library it works great as well. as for that I don't see the problem, it can use the library on your Vista or 7 machine, or even XP if you have the right media player installed.

In my experience that's not even remotely true. None of my local music shows up in the app. It can see the music, but I have to use the crappy "modern" version of a file browser and select my music manually. This is especially a pain in the ass because there are many subfolders to sort through since I have my music well-organized (but at least it works, it took me a minute to even figure out I can do that). Going to my collection shows an empty screen that complains about how lonely it is. It actually used to display my music, but it's been updated a couple times since that worked (I love how updates are creating problems rather than fixing them). Also, if it did work, if they haven't changed it again, when it does work the list view for music is absolutely horrid. I really liked the initial release that ships with Windows 8, except that it has a hard time finding all the music in your library and it was almost impossible to get it to detect when new music was added. At least it had a nice tiled view of albums displaying by cover art, though, similar to pretty much every other modern music app.

I love my Surface hardware. And Office 2013 and Remote Desktop are great. But a portable device must support media in a meaningful manner.

The Surface has no media player other than Xbox Music app and it is woeful, and downright shameful that a multi-billion dollar company could release it to manufacturing in the shape it is in.

Search is such a convoluted mess and waste of time this is the easiest way to add songs to a playlist on the Surface from a large music library:

1) Use Desktop Environment to search for song.2) Double-click to open in Music App3) Click home button to go to Music App Home screen since you can't add to playlist from song playing full screen.4) on home screen, in the now playing pane, right click, and now add to playlist.5) Repeat hundreds of time and it's still more efficient than using the Metro search and doing the same thing.

Additionally, even with mirrored Music libraries, synced playlists will only see that you have some of the songs locally, even though your entire music libraries are mirrored.

And of course there's the can't sync right now issue, and having to uninstall/reinstall the music app (on Surface) if your music library changes significantly. There's a refresh issue.

This is frustrating, but more unacceptable given the resources Microsoft has. You can have the glossiest hardware on the planet if the #@#% is a headache to use and the apps don't work (then don't release them) you're going to fail.

this pretty much describes all metro apps, none of metro apps are better, they are designed poorly, lack functions, lack options and customization.

another perfect example is windows live mail and mail, or windows live photo gallery and photos or pictures what ever its called now.

these new "modern" apps are horrible. dumbing down desktop experience to worse levels then ios/android tablets.

Actually if your music is on a local library it works great as well. as for that I don't see the problem, it can use the library on your Vista or 7 machine, or even XP if you have the right media player installed.

Not sure I'm following you with the references to older OS'. I'm only talking about the Xbox Music App in Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT. Does not find music in Library if it is on removable storage though Desktop environment and apps will through the Library. Also, synced Xbox playlists do not find all local files. But this I believe is because when the cloud service can't find a match, nothing is telling the app to search your music library. This occurs on Surface and Desktop with playlists created on either.

I think there's been a lot of indications on the web when searching for solutions that local file support is a work in progress, which is fine. Only they RTM'd. Given that, they are moving way too slow in getting it implemented. I feel they should be working around the clock at the MS campus to get all basic functionality implemented in all apps released to manufacturing.

this pretty much describes all metro apps, none of metro apps are better, they are designed poorly, lack functions, lack options and customization.

another perfect example is windows live mail and mail, or windows live photo gallery and photos or pictures what ever its called now.

these new "modern" apps are horrible. dumbing down desktop experience to worse levels then ios/android tablets.

Actually, I find the mail app on the Surface to be quite nice, fast, and functional. It's not "fully" featured, but for a tablet mail app, works quite nice. I even like it on the Desktop except there's an issue where after a few days of use hyperlinks no longer work. The web has workarounds such as deleting HKLU CLSID, etc. but nothing from Microsoft. The silence is deafening.

I just find the horrific condition of the Music app to be inexcusable and of great concern with regards to confidence in the new platform. I simply cannot go through the madness to create playlists on my desktop, search is just virtually not useable. I refuse to waste my time. It's back to Zune. Back to the future.

It's just mind baffling how Microsoft could release this and let it languish. How many billions do they need? Clearly, something is horribly wrong inside Microsoft.

Having said that, the hardware, and Server OS are top notch. Everything else clearly has potential. Now I'm truly wondering exactly why Sinofsky is gone.

not sure if this is what you meant but you can have it load straight to your music, check under settings.

I do start in My Music. What I'm referring to is when you search your music for a song to add to a playlist or even play. On every single search it defaults to All Music and presents Music Store results with priority. The quickest way to get to your files is to change the filter from "All Music" to "My Music" and you have to do this after each and every search. They need an option to set this preference for searching.

What is driving me nuts is the "album matching" which is terrible. You try to match to the correct album from your collection and then it thinks you no longer own it. Then when you try to delete the one that it thinks you don't own it deletes it from your library anyways. Frustrating.

What is driving me nuts is the "album matching" which is terrible. You try to match to the correct album from your collection and then it thinks you no longer own it. Then when you try to delete the one that it thinks you don't own it deletes it from your library anyways. Frustrating.

Ouch! Thanks for the heads up. Data loss of any kind to should trigger a Mission Critical response at the Redmond Campus but I have a feeling that is only the case in the Server Division